Thursday, December 4, 2008

Stories I tell myself

When I ride my bike anywhere (which occurs no less than 15 times a week), I like to make up bizarre stories about people that I pass to make the trip go by faster. For instance, the story that I told myself last night went something like this:There was a double-date couple sitting at a bar and grill that I passed. I imagined the older couple was the mother and father of the boy half of the younger couple, and they were meeting his girlfriend for the first time. The father looked like Stanley Tucci, and the mother looked like Nikki Blonsky in 20 years. The boy looked like Michael Cera, and the girl like Katie Holmes (they will further be known by these names). They went to the same college (ASU), where Michael will get his Bachelor's degree in business, and Katie will get her degree in art history. They will get married after she graduates, because she is pregnant with their first child. Michael will become wildly successful after setting up a custom tile flooring business in a budding town. He will be a millionaire. He and his wife will always remain faithful to one another.They will have four children. Here are their stories.

Michael Jr. - A psychologist later in his life Michael Jr. is the only one who will know (or rather, suspect) that his mother committed suicide less than a year after his father died at age 65 from a heart attack while running. In her will/suicide note (which a friendly neighbor will find), it will specifically say not to tell her children that she had killed herself, to tell them that she had fallen asleep in her garage with the car running, dying from carbon monoxide poisoning (she suffered from a mild case of narcolepsy, so this wasn't completely out there).The only person Michael Jr. will tell about his suspicions was his wife. And the only person his wife will tell is her neighbor across the street that she is in love with and sleeps with no less than four times a week (three times more than she does with her husband). She will become pregnant, and the child will be her neighbor's. She will never know this (though she'll suspect it), and neither will Michael. They will get divorced three weeks shy of their daughter's fourth birthday. Michael Jr. will have custody of his daughter, and will be nothing short of a fantastic father. He will die at the ripe old age of 82 from liver failure.Jasmine - Jasmine will be the epitome of the term "daddy's little girl," and will be a freelance journalist (she will try to go to college, but will drop out after the third semester).On the two year anniversary of her father's death, she will release a book called "My Father's Eyes" (named after the Eric Clapton song), and it will be a biography of her father told by family and friends close to him. It will become incredibly popular, sitting at the top of the New York Times' best seller list for six weeks before being overtaken by Jamie Lynn Spears' autobiography (titled "My Life, The Circus").She will get married to a man named Doug, and will miscarry three babies with him because of a problem with her uterus. These three miscarriages will drive them apart, and they will get divorced shortly after the third one. She will remarry 7 years later, and will love this man (Brad) more than she loved Doug. Brad will understand her inability to birth children, and will agree to adopt one with her. They will travel to Africa and adopt a baby boy named Marshall. She will be skeptical of her love for him at first, but will grow to treat him like her own. She will be a good (albeit short-tempered) mother.She will die at age 70 after getting hit by a car driven by a drunk driver while walking her small dog at night. Her husband will never remarry, nor even consider it.Stanley (named after Michael's father) - Stanley will move out of his house when he is 17, to live with his 32 year-old drug dealing girlfriend named Maisy. He will be arrested at the age of 19 under suspicion of menace, and the police will discover 3 grams of cocaine in his front shirt pocket. He will be sentenced to 6 months of rehab and 6 months of probation, which he will serve honestly and truthfully (because he really does want help).At the age of 22, he will become a born-again Christian, having started his path to "finding God" while in rehab. He will become a youth minister for a Southern Baptist Church in Tennessee, and all of his "children" will love him. He will never marry, and will die alone at the age of 47 from a heroin overdose after falling off the metaphorical sober wagon.Stephen - In his sixth year of college to become a businessman like his father, Stephen will be in a near-fatal car accident that will leave his legs crushed and unusable without the aid of a cane, crutches, or leg braces. He could use a wheelchair, but thinks that people will see him as weak. After the accident, he will abandon his business degrees to become a physical therapist, so that he can help people like himself. He will write a self-help book for partially crippled people, and it will be mildly popular.He is gay, and will have a partner throughout his entire life, named Richard (but "Dick" to his friends, as a sort of in-joke). After revealing to his siblings that he is homosexual, he will be completely cut off by his super-religious brother, Stanley. They will never reconcile, and it will weigh on Stephen's heart for the rest of his life. He will die four weeks before his sister, at age 62, after falling off of his roof while putting Christmas decorations up. Dick will commit suicide via shotgun a month later, his note saying only that he "Was left alone in an unfriendly world."

You see? It took me about 30 minutes to come up with all of these details. And yes, I do "tell myself" these stories. Hell, I was biking home at 11:30. No one will hear me.